NASCAR and top class racing is the Sport of Engineers, its not like someone just bought a car at a dealership and entered it into a NASCAR race (although I am sure jimbob would love to do that) League of legends is the sport of Neckbeards, they go pro by complaining.

I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

the money is in the banana stand:I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but not everyone in the world is exactly like you.

When I would be at daycare as a kid, I actually liked watching people play Mario Bros more than playing it. Because you can learn a lot about different ways people play games and improve your own gameplay in the process. Which is why people enjoy watching LoL and other games. Multiplayer games are so much more competitive than bots/AIs/single player for this exact reason.

justtray:the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but not everyone in the world is exactly like you.

When I would be at daycare as a kid, I actually liked watching people play Mario Bros more than playing it. Because you can learn a lot about different ways people play games and improve your own gameplay in the process. Which is why people enjoy watching LoL and other games. Multiplayer games are so much more competitive than bots/AIs/single player for this exact reason.

There is a vast difference between watching a game to figure out your opponent's weaknesses or tactics and watching it for enjoyment. I just don't see there being a spectator support base to warrant it really be classified as a sport. I would wager that most people that watch it are fellow gamers, most with aspirations to be pro-gamers themselves and not people watching it for the entertainment value it provides. I believe eSports even exists because it promotes other gamers to buy those games.

To put it this way, I have never in my life heard anyone say "hey let's go to a bar or a friend's house to go watch people play Halo," no, if they are even remotely interested in games they will say "hey let's go to a friend's house to play Halo." I understand not everyone is like me, but I just don't see there being the support base to really support Professional Gaming from a true spectator-as-a-means-of-entertainment aspect. Cite Starcraft and Korea all you want. There is a reason why channels like G4, ZDTV, TechTV etc. ALL failed miserably and have cancelled almost all of their gaming programs. I will let you figure out why.

the money is in the banana stand:I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

Cerebral Knievel:the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

does anyone understand what I'm trying to describe?

You mean like a LAN party basically and Spectator mode in games? Quakecon etc. but in a local bar or internet cafe setting? It is all about playing, or watching to get better playing - not watching for entertainment. In any game that I play, if someone is in spectator mode, they are either AFK, reffing a match, or can't join the team they want and are waiting on someone to leave.

the money is in the banana stand:They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

Depends on the type of game and the quality of the game. The problem is, for someone like me, I think most of the current "e-Sports" are average to mediocre games. But where I would wonder out loud why I would want to watch people play a game I don't think is any good, the long-time competitive game crowd figured out the post-StarCraft II era is their one shot to get some limited fame and fortune playing video games, so they jumped at inferior games (and the sponsors' marketing money) in order to make it happen.

Cerebral Knievel:the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

the money is in the banana stand:Cerebral Knievel: the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

does anyone understand what I'm trying to describe?

You mean like a LAN party basically and Spectator mode in games? Quakecon etc. but in a local bar or internet cafe setting? It is all about playing, or watching to get better playing - not watching for entertainment. In any game that I play, if someone is in spectator mode, they are either AFK, reffing a match, or can't join the team they want and are waiting on someone to leave.

Yeah! Reff mode, spec mode, and then broadcasting that view to the event hall.If there is a way to do this with a popular sports tittle and be able to present that view as the main display for an audience, I think that could work quite well for a sports bar type of venue.. the participants could have a place to play, mingle and show off, and it would provide entertainment for the other patrons. All the while promoting the concept of Egaming to the general public.

I think the concept is a win for all involved.. execution however, is always the sticky point.

Mike_LowELL:the money is in the banana stand: They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

Depends on the type of game and the quality of the game. The problem is, for someone like me, I think most of the current "e-Sports" are average to mediocre games. But where I would wonder out loud why I would want to watch people play a game I don't think is any good, the long-time competitive game crowd figured out the post-StarCraft II era is their one shot to get some limited fame and fortune playing video games, so they jumped at inferior games (and the sponsors' marketing money) in order to make it happen.

I will put it this way, there is a reason why this article is on the Geek tab, and not Entertainment or Sports tab. Video games are made for playing, not watching. The enjoyability comes from the cognitive and problem solving part. There is a vast difference between watching CS in spectator mode versus watching Heat or any movie. Then again, I guess Square Enix sort-of paved the way for games basically being movies with non-stop cut-scenes and all.

mikaloyd:Cerebral Knievel: the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

Cerebral Knievel:mikaloyd: Cerebral Knievel: the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

does anyone understand what I'm trying to describe?

Drunks playing video games together while other drunks watch and bet

YES! BRILLIANT! Just like Darts and Pool!

The only probably is that gamers typically aren't the social type to go to a bar and be in the physical presence of others. They typically have Aspergers, are anti-social, or would rather be in a more casual relaxed environment. You are talking about people who would sell their medicine for a WoW sub paying to get out of the house. That is actually really funny when I think about it.

the money is in the banana stand:I will put it this way, there is a reason why this article is on the Geek tab, and not Entertainment or Sports tab. Video games are made for playing, not watching. The enjoyability comes from the cognitive and problem solving part. There is a vast difference between watching CS in spectator mode versus watching Heat or any movie. Then again, I guess Square Enix sort-of paved the way for games basically being movies with non-stop cut-scenes and all.

I look at spectatorship in both sports and games the same way: You should be learning something from those games, so that when you go play the games, you're making the experience more fun. I'm totally opposed to the idea that you watch a game rather than playing it. However, this may be a bit difficult to explain to a country whose most popular sport is football, a game which pretty much everyone stops playing after high school.

the money is in the banana stand:Cerebral Knievel: mikaloyd: Cerebral Knievel: the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I feel your pain, and that is why I presented prothe option thread pro sports simulator option up thread. A bar league of folks competing head to head in a popular team sports ball game. And the game itself could be out put like a normal broadcast sports ball event to the event locations display. Like a third person view directors option.

does anyone understand what I'm trying to describe?

Drunks playing video games together while other drunks watch and bet

YES! BRILLIANT! Just like Darts and Pool!

The only probably is that gamers typically aren't the social type to go to a bar and be in the physical presence of others. They typically have Aspergers, are anti-social, or would rather be in a more casual relaxed environment. You are talking about people who would sell their medicine for a WoW sub paying to get out of the house. That is actually really funny when I think about it.

That's why I limited the games to regular sports types of games. And the audience would be folks who like that sort of thing and would be prone to hanging out in sports bars to begin with. I aain't talking the WoW kids, I'm talking the Madden kids. Presentable and entertaining to the participants and the observers.

the money is in the banana stand:There is a reason why channels like G4, ZDTV, TechTV etc. ALL failed miserably and have cancelled almost all of their gaming programs. I will let you figure out why.

i am not going to say much about zdtv or tech tv, but G4 died because it relied on over 9000 hours of cops and american ninja programming. and its flagship show was "attack of the show" with some douche-y guy kevin perrera and some mildly attractive women that i think at least half the watchers hated. the channel had one half hour show devoted to gaming called xplay. it focused on reviewing games and previewing upcoming games. this had nothing at all to do with watching competitive gaming.

i agree that you probably couldn't have a channel based around competitive gaming, but citing the failure of G4 is not a good example of your argument.

and as to your point about halo, the objective is to point and shoot, maybe strafe a little if you are leetzorz. more strategic games offer opportunities to mess up almost immediately which gives them a long term disadvantage in the game. i like watching something called bronze league heroes (link goes to youtube) which shows noob starcraft 2 players bashing awkwardly at each other. it is kind of a fun time waster, but surely will not entertain everybody

I quite like LoL. I find it much deeper than DotA 2 very much because of its certain limitations rather than in spite of them. Counterpicking and catastrophic snowballing are too easy to have happen in DotA 2, while in LoL, no matter what happens you still have to outplay your opponent to win.

I also used to be one of those who shat on the idea of e-sports. But I've come around. The draw of LoL's seasonal tournaments is seeing those pro players doing what you (technically) COULD do with the same champions, only they are so much better at it. Once you play for a little while you can appreciate what you are seeing, and that is fun. You can also transfer what you see into your own game, and that is also fun.

In any event Riot is making money hand over fist with LoL and I think quite deservedly. It's one of the most popular games in the world now and earned its success.

the money is in the banana stand:I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

Watching any type of competitive event is pointless to some people. Some like to play. Some like to watch. I like to do both.

It mostly stems from the time I use to play competitively. I played Brood War and King of Fighters 98 in tournaments for years. I even won a few regional tournaments; so I know how much effort it takes to be consistently good at games. For me watching the matches is just another way to appreciating the amount of skill it takes to be consistently good. Now I just play casually, but I still watch because I enjoy high level competition. I don't have the time to put in the amount of practice necessary to be competitive myself, but I never lost the desire to watch high level play.

My question to you is, are you the type of person to go to tournaments and compete?If so, what do you do during the times you aren't playing?

If you play your matches then pack up and go home when you lose, I'm not sure how successful you are.

Let me just say that I've never meet any tournament level player who didn't also enjoy watching a good match. Again, most of my experience is with fighting games (KOF, Street Fighter, MvC, CvS etc) and RTS (SC, SC2, Warcraft, C&C), so maybe the Call of Duty / Halo crowd can get better without ever watching anyone else play, but you quickly hit a wall in fighting and RTS games unless you watch and study what other people are doing. If you hate watching games, then there's little to no chance that you are taking the time to study a matchup. Even just watching your own replays can show you a ton of mistakes that need to be rectified. That still involves watching, not playing.

Heck one of the reasons competition has gotten so good now is because video is available. It wasn't unusual back before the days of online streaming (or gaming on TV in places like Korea and Germany) for one player to dominate a scene for years because know one else knew what they were doing. People starting bringing camcorders to tournaments when they knew certain players were going to play just so that they could record matches to learn from. Then were were tournaments that started banning camcorders to prevent players from stealing tech.

Of course you may have never played to compete at a high level. In which case you probably don't know what I am talking about, which is fine.

the money is in the banana stand:justtray: the money is in the banana stand: I just don't understand the point of Pro-Gaming. This coming from someone who has played games professionally. I find it outright boring as fark to watch anyone "compete" in eSports and without spectators, there is no point other than self gratification. Maybe I am weird but I feel the same way mostly about most sports - fun to play but not as much spectate. Games however are not fun in the slightest to watch. They are mostly anticlimactic and like watching paint dry. Even as a kid when we only had 1 computer or console, I would get annoyed as fark when my brothers were playing and I wanted to play, I didn't want to watch them play.

I know this is going to sound crazy, but not everyone in the world is exactly like you.

When I would be at daycare as a kid, I actually liked watching people play Mario Bros more than playing it. Because you can learn a lot about different ways people play games and improve your own gameplay in the process. Which is why people enjoy watching LoL and other games. Multiplayer games are so much more competitive than bots/AIs/single player for this exact reason.

There is a vast difference between watching a game to figure out your opponent's weaknesses or tactics and watching it for enjoyment. I just don't see there being a spectator support base to warrant it really be classified as a sport. I would wager that most people that watch it are fellow gamers, most with aspirations to be pro-gamers themselves and not people watching it for the entertainment value it provides. I believe eSports even exists because it promotes other gamers to buy those games.

To put it this way, I have never in my life heard anyone say "hey let's go to a bar or a friend's house to go watch people play Halo," no, if they are even remotely interested in games they will say "hey let's go to a friend's house to play Halo." I understand not everyone is like me, but I just don't see there being the support base to really su ...

Cerebral Knievel:I know a lot of folks like to joke about NASCARR being all about driving around in a circle all day, and... well, yeah, that's what it is.... except it is a hugely powerful purposely built car, and you are driving it close quarters with a bunch of other assholes. The driver has to always be on his toes, monitoring his equipment, working on sstrategy, being situationally aware of everything going on, while going close to 200mph.

For the record, I am not a NASCARR fan, but I can appreciate that there is more to it than driving around in a circle all day.

don't have anything bad to say about pro gamers either, if you can make a living at it? Go for it

I used to be snarky about NASCAR, and then I had an opportunity to go into the Pits, visit a Team Shop, and sit behind the Engineers in their little tower at the Pit.

J. Frank Parnell:The League of Legends community convinced me Eugenics isn't such a bad idea.

And about half of the top 50 or so worst members of the community are, in fact, Pro players. Many and perhaps even most of the pro guys are in fact terrible people, some of them bad enough that more than one of the world top-ranked teams have been crippled for months at a time by members getting banned.

You've seen how bad the people are that get off without so much as a warning, can you even conceive how bad you have to be to actually be banned? Usually more than once?

Forget Eugenics, it's probably time to reduce large portions of the planet to nuclear ash from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

It's a relatively simple video game based around the Hero maps in Warcraft 3. You pick your little guy from a list, pick from a couple basic specialization options with relatively small impact on gameplay, start at level 1 with a very quick one-click leveling system for your maximum of four skills, and beat the crap out of each other in a basic capture/control map with five-man teams.

The game itself is pretty fun, just the right mix of simple and complex to be enjoyable without requiring any actual intellectual investment, sort of on par with playing football or boxing or something. The whole bit where each player only has four abilities and the skill comes form using them creatively actually makes it all right to watch, too, though I've never been a spectator sport kind of guy. I can tolerate it to about the same extent as watching football, in either case I have much greater patience for actually playing.

That's the game itself, though, the player community is known more for... other reasons. The primary reason being that they make hanging out in Call of Duty on XBox Live look like a great hangout for mature and responsible adults of stable and reasoned temperament.

Mike_LowELL:degenerate-afro: It's probably the simplest game in terms of hand-eye coordination out of the major RTS (Starcraft, DOTA, LoL,Warcraft III even Age of Empires)

After giving this a lot of thought, I've actually concluded the game is closer to Action-RPGs and 3D brawlers like Dynasty Warriors. Of course, nobody has stopped to think how horribly stupid it is to play a versus multiplayer 3D brawler with an RTS free camera and RTS targeting interface, but that's a really long story.

If Dynasty Warriors was a pro game, I would be on the circuit tomorrow.

Mike_LowELL:degenerate-afro: Brood War had to die sometime. Let it go man, cuz it's gone. (Plus HotS is starting to return some of the Brood War mechanics to the game)

StarCraft II is fundamentally flawed because they built the same unit and game concepts into a modernized interface that was never designed for them. You can do all the balance tweaks that you want, but unless you fundamentally redefine how the game plays, much as The Frozen Throne did for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, it's going to remain the game where you mass 200 supply of units in the center of the map and twitch into whatever you want to die, a game closer to Command and Conquer than Brood War.

degenerate-afro: Meh, the FADC mechanic is stupid, but after three years, I think it has taken it's place as a very solid Street Fighter game. It's not SF2 Turbo, but it's not Capcom Fighting Jam either.

I don't think it's a terrible game, and so far as I can tell with my meager fighting game knowledge, it's mechanically competent. But lord, it's so slow.

degenerate-afro: No, you misunderstand. The people pushing eSports are the hardware manufacturers. Blame BenQ, Kingston, Cooler Master, Razer, Mad Catz, ThermalTake, Need for Seat, etc. They are trying to sell their products. The game manufacturers don't have the money to put on tournaments by themselves.

Sure they do. A million bucks is a piss in the wind for a company like Tencent right about now, and if you think of it as advertising, it's probably a hell of a lot cheaper than a television marketing campaign, and gets further reach with the audience it wants. Not that I disagree with the overarching premise, and I do agree that hardware/"gamer" companies will piggyback these things to the death.

When you talk about SC2 are you talking about pro players? the Meta for that game is ever changing. you can die in 5 mins if you don't scout and the opponent has a anti-build to yours. There's a reason why you have openers into macro game.

Yes, many games will go to 200 supply. but pro players will do the utmost to stop the opponent getting to 200/200 (early Oracle/Hellbat harrass, baneling bust, widow mine drop, etc). Even when both players max out at 200, the wrong compliment of units will get you wiped of the face of the map in about 10 seconds.

degenerate-afro:eSports pros have been coming over to the US to play for years. Starcraft players, Street Fighter players, etc. I'm not sure why LoL should have a special exception. Maybe because it's a team based game where as most of the other games are single player?

Plus will this extend beyond League?

For example, would Team Liquid's League of Legends players be eligible for the Visa, but their Starcraft 2 players not qualify?

How about Complexity. Could they have their Call of Duty, Fifa and Fighting Game players to sign up for a League of Legends Visa or would only their LoL team be able to apply?

The primary reason, I'm guessing, is because LoL is huge in China, South-East Asia(Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, ect), and Korea, being a foreigner in the US for long periods of time can be a hassle these days, and visa's just make the frequent border-hopping necessitated by a game with this sort of fan-geography easier. Plus, LoL is so much bigger than any other online game right now if Twitch stream pops are any indication. As in 5x the viewers of anything else on a slow day; come tournaments and the difference can get ridiculous.

Jim_Callahan:J. Frank Parnell: The League of Legends community convinced me Eugenics isn't such a bad idea.

And about half of the top 50 or so worst members of the community are, in fact, Pro players. Many and perhaps even most of the pro guys are in fact terrible people, some of them bad enough that more than one of the world top-ranked teams have been crippled for months at a time by members getting banned.

You've seen how bad the people are that get off without so much as a warning, can you even conceive how bad you have to be to actually be banned? Usually more than once?

Forget Eugenics, it's probably time to reduce large portions of the planet to nuclear ash from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

HotWingAgenda: What in the flying f*ck is League of Legends?

It's a relatively simple video game based around the Hero maps in Warcraft 3. You pick your little guy from a list, pick from a couple basic specialization options with relatively small impact on gameplay, start at level 1 with a very quick one-click leveling system for your maximum of four skills, and beat the crap out of each other in a basic capture/control map with five-man teams.

The game itself is pretty fun, just the right mix of simple and complex to be enjoyable without requiring any actual intellectual investment, sort of on par with playing football or boxing or something. The whole bit where each player only has four abilities and the skill comes form using them creatively actually makes it all right to watch, too, though I've never been a spectator sport kind of guy. I can tolerate it to about the same extent as watching football, in either case I have much greater patience for actually playing.

That's the game itself, though, the player community is known more for... other reasons. The primary reason being that they make hanging out in Call of Duty on XBox Live look like a great hangout for mature and responsible adults of stable and reasoned temperament.

I've been gaming on the internet for quite awhile now and honestly I don't find the LoL community any worse than the others I've been in. Warcraft III's custom-game chat was horrendous, and the people who played TF Classic and all the other multiplayer HF mods were equally atrocious d-bags. SimiIarly, it's no worse that what you'll find any X-Box lobbies everyday. I think LoL gets the attention in this regard that it does not because it's all that worse than any other gaming fandom, but because Riot has been dedicated to curbing player-abuse from the get-go, and generated some genuinely effective and publicity-worthy methods in the process.

I'd also say you're underestimating the complexity of LoL a bit, but like with most games you kind of need to watch it for awhile before that sort of thing becomes obvious, so it's understandable.

Mike_LowELL:CmndrFish: ArenaNet was at one point testing a MOBA (genre of LoL and DotA) map for PvP in Guild Wars 2. That would have used an action RPG interface and camera. They ended up shelving the idea because they couldn't get it to play like they wanted. Part of MOBA's is observing what is going on in other parts of the map, and that's why the RTS camera is useful.

Oddly enough, for this really narrow genre in part the strange interface combo works.

Errant Signal - Kinaesthetics

It may work from a mechanical perspective, just as last-hitting is mechanically essential to the entire concept of the subgenre as currently designed (because it's the only thing forcing players to play aggressive prior to the mid-game). But from a kinaesthetic perspective, it's just a massacre. It gives the player minimal on-screen connection to the action taking place on the screen. There's a reason that other action games--games where you play as one single character--keep the camera focused on the character, and tie their entire system of input and button presses directly to the actions you create. That's so the player can establish a direct connection to their character. They can be the character. The RTS interface was designed for a premise where you are playing as a commander watching over a vast battlefield, and in this case, does not work here, because you're (usually) controlling a single unit.

An FPS or over the shoulder cam would be terrible for MOBAs. Other's have tried it btw, so their failure to reach popularity is sort of a real-world proof of this. Cams like that actually limit the player's perspective. With an RTS view, you can see all around you, to the sides and behind, while with the cams you suggest a player can only see in front of them. In a game where ambushing plays such a huge role, it's necessary from a defensive perspective for each Player to have that extra bit of information about their surroundings. Also, the RTS layout incorporates minimaps far better than FPS does, and map-awareness is a huge, huge, hugehugehuge part of MOBA games.

Eh, I doubt you need any performance enhancers for LoL. It's probably the simplest game in terms of hand-eye coordination out of the major RTS (Starcraft, DOTA, LoL,Warcraft III even Age of Empires)

No it isn't. Due to the existence of skill-shots, the importance of positioning, and the heavy reliance on the Flash summoner spell, hand-eye is far more important in LoL than any of those games. And DOTA isn't "hard" it's poorly made. Preserving the structural flaws of a game built on a coding platform not designed for it was a remarkably dumb(although cheap) idea on Valve's part, as was transferring the old DOTA characters over without putting in any consideration towards balancing. A multi-player game where one player can easily build themselves to solo the entire enemy team is a poorly designed game, and one where accomplishing that is the surest path to victory is even worse. Even Hyper-Carries like Tristana and Kogmaw are squishy enough to quickly die if they try that foolishness.

Eh, I doubt you need any performance enhancers for LoL. It's probably the simplest game in terms of hand-eye coordination out of the major RTS (Starcraft, DOTA, LoL,Warcraft III even Age of Empires)

No it isn't. Due to the existence of skill-shots, the importance of positioning, and the heavy reliance on the Flash summoner spell, hand-eye is far more important in LoL than any of those games. And DOTA isn't "hard" it's poorly made. Preserving the structural flaws of a game built on a coding platform not designed for it was a remarkably dumb(although cheap) idea on Valve's part, as was transferring the old DOTA characters over without putting in any consideration towards balancing. A multi-player game where one player can easily build themselves to solo the entire enemy team is a poorly designed game, and one where accomplishing that is the surest path to victory is even worse. Even Hyper-Carries like Tristana and Kogmaw are squishy enough to quickly die if they try that foolishness.

A fed Nasus can pretty much solo a team. I notice you didn't mention Vayne, as her mechanics allow her to own entire teams in fights late game by her lonesome. There are others that can do it in the right situations such as Trynadmere and AP Yi. What about Teemo leading you through his magical mushroom kingdom? Every champion has a counter or two, but nothing says you are going to have that counter in that game; especially in blind-pick matches. Riot does do a lot to try and keep things balanced, don't get me wrong... but you can't argue that there aren't situations where your team is going to be ROFL-stomped and there is very little you can do about it. Sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. Having a lane comp that isn't favorable can snowball into disaster for your whole team in both DoTA and LoL. DoTA is much less forgiving in that regard... but it's still present in LoL all the same.

What League does do better than DoTA is allow for the game to be won at different stages. My team might not shine early on, but late game (if we can get there) we are going to destroy you. Certain champions dominate certain stages of the game and the game allows you to achieve victory at almost any one of these stages.DoTA seems like a much slower game where everything is geared towards end game play. Most all of the matches I've watched have seemed extremely passive until at least level 6 (no dives, no killing, no exchanges), and it's usually much higher then that before anything really significant happens. League is certainly more dynamic and fast paced and that is one of it's major advantages.

Mike_LowELL:Okay, going to kill this thread before it gets out of control, because people who suck shiat at video games are inevitably going to come in this thread and claim some dumb things. No, there's nothing wrong with playing video games for a living. Yes, you have to be particularly good to do this. The problem is that people now chase video games because they're "e-Sports" or "competitive", rather than actually playing the good games and pursuing competition in those if they find the games enjoyable enough. StarCraft II is an average game, Street Fighter IV isn't as good as its predecessors, League of Legends and DotA 2...well, lol. And yet, people are playing those, because companies can use prize tournaments as a form of advertising for their games, all disguised as "company goodwill".

Claka:When you talk about SC2 are you talking about pro players? the Meta for that game is ever changing.

The reason is that Blizzard is making the same mistake as every other developer, because you have an entire generation of video game players who have trouble understanding the subtle design of the systems in these games and value "balance" over interesting design, since all of these players would be undefeated if they weren't playing the weakest race, or some dumb excuse they came up with. In response, developers have to--and can benefit from--repeatedly patching their games in order to provide the illusion of a naturally-evolving "metagame", the illusion of depth. StarCraft: Brood War was last patched in 2001 and the evolution of the playstyles in that game came through the increase in player skill and also the new map designs, which are aesthetically-appealing by their nature.

Claka:Yes, many games will go to 200 supply. but pro players will do the utmost to stop the opponent getting to 200/200 (early Oracle/Hellbat harrass, baneling bust, widow mine drop, etc). Even when both players max out at 200, the wrong compliment of units will get you wiped of the face of the map in about 10 seconds.

I don't disagree with you. I'm more concerned with whether the act of stopping a player from getting to that point is more interesting than it was in the previous StarCraft game and other games in the genre. And based on what I've played, I don't think it is. I'm pretty much convinced that all of these games are piggybacking what made the previous games special and doing it in the pursuit of marketing their games through spectator sport. So, there you go.

Heron:An FPS or over the shoulder cam would be terrible for MOBAs. Other's have tried it btw, so their failure to reach popularity is sort of a real-world proof of this.

What it demonstrates is that there's a gigantic percentage of video game players who care dick for proper aesthetic design in video games, particularly the "e-Sports" audience, who are completely and utterly focused on what can be done with the mechanics to give them a better edge in winning and losing. (And believe me, I played a lot of StarCraft II, so I am familiar with how these guys act.) Do note that I think the free camera and the last-hitting mechanic (two of my three major grievances with the core design of the DotA subgenre) could probably be justified with some aesthetic hand-wringing. (The third, the automated RTS-style physical attacks, just need to be done away with entirely.)

Heron:With an RTS view, you can see all around you, to the sides and behind, while with the cams you suggest a player can only see in front of them. In a game where ambushing plays such a huge role, it's necessary from a defensive perspective for each Player to have that extra bit of information about their surroundings. Also, the RTS layout incorporates minimaps far better than FPS does, and map-awareness is a huge, huge, hugehugehuge part of MOBA games.

No problem with the camera being top-down. There's plenty of game types that demonstrate you can do this in an action game. But you should not be able to move it around the map at your discretion, because that's just bogus. The problem is that, since the genre evolved from an incredibly limited series of map editors (rather than being programmed from scratch), it is an action game which uses a real-time strategy interface, and continues to use it for little reason other than "it got popular, so why bother changing it?" Again, it may be mechanically valid and even essential to the character of the subgenre. That does not necessarily mean it is "good" design. It just happens that they've built more of the features and functions of the game model around it.

bhcompy:Electrify: I'll play League again when they stop bundling it with a virus.

/Pando Media Booster can DIAF

You can disable it and uninstall at as soon as you get to the patch screen. It is not required to keep it on your machine

Oh I know that, but how discreetly it installs itself is what bugs me. My internet was lagging like hell and I thought it was the router, after spending several hours troubleshooting I thought back and realized that my problems started shortly after installing LoL. I thought how could one of the most popular games in the world be responsible for my internet, but decided to look to Google for the answer. To my dismay it appeared the that virus bundled in the TOS was solely responsible for my problems.

Either way, I'm looking forward to DOTA2 wiping the floor with LoL now that it is out of beta. Even if my reasons for this are personal rather than logical, the fact that it has built in voice chat so I can join a game and chat rather than needing to be in a guild is enough for me to put it over the top.